Arizona's Governor Signs Bill Making Pluto the Official State Planet

'Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona...' reads the official text of House Bill #2,477. 'PLUTO IS THE OFFICIAL STATE PLANET.'

An anonymous reader shared this report from Capital Media Services:

The governor signed legislation Friday designating Pluto as Arizona's 'official state planet.' It joins a list of other items the state has declared to be 'official,'' ranging from turquoise as the state gemstone and copper as the state metal to the Sonorasaurus as the state dinosaur. 'I am proud of Arizona's pioneering work in space discovery,' governor Hobbs said.

What makes Pluto unique and ripe for claim by Arizona is that it is the only planet actually discovered in the United States, and the discovery was made in Flagstaff. Rep. Justin Wilmeth, a Phoenix Republican and self-described 'history nerd,'' said that needed to be commemorated, starting with the legacy of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. In 1930, Tombaugh was working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. 'The whole story of Clyde is just amazing, just sitting there under the telescope'' looking for planets by taking photos over a period of time, said Wilmeth. 'It was two different glass planes that had one little spec of light moving in a different direction,'' showing it wasn't just another star — and all by observation and not computers. 'To me, that's something that's just mind boggling.'

'The International Astronomical Union voted years ago to strip Pluto of its official status as a planet,' the article points out, noting that its official definition specifies that planets 'clear the neighboring region of other objects.' (While Pluto 'has such a small gravitational pull, it has not attracted and absorbed other space rocks in its orbit'.)

So in 2006 Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet, according to a NASA web page. 'Pluto is about 1/6 the width of Earth,' and has a radius of 715 miles or 1,151 kilometers. 'If Earth was the size of a nickel, Pluto would be about as big as a popcorn kernel.'

Long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam called Arizona's new legislation 'How to advertise you are ignorant. Scientists said something we don't like, so we'll make a law!'
They can call it their 'State Planet' all they want, but people who actually know about the skies will be mocking them for it. While there is nostalgia for the old classification, and the new one isn't perfect... it's certainly more meaningful when trying to divide up the objects of a planetary system for study.

Reached for a comment by Capital Media Services, Representative Wilmeth said 'It might matter to some that are going to get picky or persnickety about stuff... There's several generations of Americans... who believe that Pluto's a planet — or at least that's what we were taught. I'm never going to think differently. That's just my personal opinion.' (The news site adds that 'What is important, Wilmeth said, is remembering the history and promoting it.')

Five senators in Arizona's state legislatur did vote against the measure — though not all of them did so for scientific reasons, Senator Anthony Kern explained to Capital Media Services. 'I did not want to discriminate against those who wanted Mars, Venus, Jupiter, or everyone's favorite, Uranus.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.